


Cold Cuts

by wanttobeatree



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 12:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1227136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanttobeatree/pseuds/wanttobeatree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody ever finds out precisely when Will disappears. Nobody ever finds out how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Cuts

**Author's Note:**

> Started this before 1x12, dropped it when it was Jossed, but I thought now I might as well finish the last few sentences and whack it up here. Because WHY NOT.

Nobody ever finds out precisely when Will disappears. Nobody ever finds out how. He misses his classes on the Monday, and on the Tuesday Dr Lecter calls Jack in his office.

“Have you heard from Will recently?” he asks.

“Oh hell,” Jack says, and sighs, and rests his elbows on the desk.

They meet at Will’s house. His car is parked outside and half-buried in snow. The drift has blown undisturbed all the way up to the front door. Any footprints are long gone and in the house no lights are on. Even at this distance, they can hear the dogs howling inside, hungry and scared and alone.

 

Things happen very quickly after that, with the weight of Jack’s presence to pull on the strings and call in old favours. An APB is put out, all doors in Wolf Trap knocked upon, the bare bones of Will’s last known movements reconstructed. He drove home from work on Friday, walked inside his little house and locked the door behind him.

“Give me your honest opinion, Doctor,” Jack says, at last, at midnight.

Hannibal hesitates. They sit together on Will’s porch, inside the police tape, watching the long line of search-and-rescue team and volunteers pacing through the snow. A chopper circles overhead, equipped with a thermal imaging camera and a bright search light; it briefly illuminates the snow before them as bright as day. 

The rotor whips the snow into a flurry. They wait for it to pass.

“I see several options,” Hannibal says, slowly. “He might have craved isolation and left of his own accord, in which case he could still contact us soon. He might have slipped and fallen out here and been buried under the snow.”

He pauses, looking out at their team of volunteers, a grim-faced mix of FBI, police and locals. The search-and-rescue dogs prowl in the snow, their presence making Will’s dogs bark uneasily whenever they come too close to the house. Hannibal frowns in thought.

“But what do you think?” Jack asks.

“Another, unavoidable option,” Hannibal says softly, still frowning out at the landscape, “is the danger of his job. He might have made enemies. He might have come too close to his quarry and been unable to escape. But...”

“But?”

“He was distressed, the last time we spoke. On Friday,” he adds, before Jack can ask. “He seemed agitated. More, that is, than usual.”

“You think he was unstable? More than – more than usual?”

“He was fixated on a - particular idea,” Hannibal says. “Something had disturbed him. I could not put his mind at ease. In retrospect, yes, I believe I would call him unstable. My honest opinion, Jack, is that Will has done something very foolish.”

Jack draws in a slow breath. “If you thought he was a danger to himself...”

“In this field, he was always going to be a danger to himself. You knew this was a possibility. It was why you brought him to me, was it not? If something has happened to him, I fear we both must share the blame.”

Hannibal turns his face away from Jack, straightening his shirt cuffs beneath the sleeves of his winter coat. It is beginning to snow again. In the house, the dogs are howling.

“But if I had kept closer watch,” he adds, his voice soft, “perhaps things would be different now.”

 

The day they call off the search, Hannibal invites everyone back to his house, insists, as they are tired and hungry and will not eat properly alone. I have, he says, a little a something cold leftover in my larder.

“Venison,” he explains. He carves the meat with practised ease, passing plates around the table. Thick, pink slices. The scent is inviting despite the sadness in the air.

“My butcher shot it himself,” he says, with the knife in his hand. “He tells me it was a beautiful stag. Almost seems a pity to eat it, does it not?”

He seats himself gracefully and, gazing down at his plate, he toys with the stem of his wine glass before he lifts it. He pauses again with the glass raised in his hand and looks around at his guests. He takes in the grim expressions; Alana’s pale face; Beverley’s downcast eyes. Jack has aged ten years in a week.

“Will,” he says, in the end, lifting up his glass. The name echoes softly around the table. 

Hannibal sips the wine. He lowers the glass.

Watching the others begin to eat, he touches the edge of his knife, with something like grief on his face.


End file.
